RIP Dottie

My mother called yesterday...my great-aunt Dottie died. Dorothy Hix of Birmingham, Alabama,, last living member of her generation, older sister of my grandfather, John Daniel Hix. She was something like 92 when she died, notwithstanding a typically Southern ferocious addiction to cigarettes. The Hix women live forever. Mama Hix (my great-grandmother) lived into her '90s as well, as did Dottie's sisters and cousins.

She and I corresponded a lot. She was very sweet--would always send me very Southern Baptist Easter cards (lots of Bible verses--that branch of the family was Southern Baptist which is odd to imagine my grandather as--he was VERY progressive for his time and made a point of socializing with blacks when he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps, even though that was frowned upon), and write in this flowery old lady hand, and ask about my career. A very kind, thoughtful, Christian old lady. It was either she or one of her sisters who was a friend to Zelda Fitzgerald. I wonder what her experiences during the civil rights era were?

I'll post the obituary when I find it. I would love to go to the funeral but that's just not financially possible.

My dolls

I received a package from my parents yesterday. Thinking it was belated Christmas presents (my dad's side of the family has always been kind of slackjaw about such celebrations--it stems from my dad being a pilot and always having to fly on Christmas Day, so we'd celebrate when he got back), I didn't open it until today. Inside were a bunch of old dolls of mine that I left at my dad and stepmother's when I moved back to live with my mother after 9th grade. There were at least 10 dolls in there, plus a lot of clothes and all very old, most of them at least 30 years old. Almost all of them are in various states of disrepair--I was very hard on my dolls and a lot of them are missing an arm or a hand. I also used to cut their hair a lot and several have mohawks. There's a Shaun Cassidy-as-Joe Hardy doll, a Ballerina Barbie, a Farrah Fawcett doll (Who's the doll with the head of golden hair?/Farraaaaaahhhhh..../The doll with the face so pretty, so fair?/Farraaaaaaaah...) in three pieces, although I never cut her hair, a regular Barbie doll with a bob, a headless Skipper doll. Man, I was rough on poor Skipper. I thought she looked much more like a boy than a girl so I cut her hair like a boy's, drew nipples on her chest and renamed her Tony Gonzales. I had this enthusiasm for ethnic names, drawn from my immersion in such classically '70s works as Walk Proud and the Espie Sanchez books, except that I'd never actually heard the name Gonzales, so I pronounced it Gon-zaylz, two syllables. There's also another Barbie, two Madame Alexander dolls (including a Scarlett O'Hara doll), a red-headed doll in two pieces (I should nickname her the Red Dahlia) plus my four Wizard of Oz dolls--Dorothy (with a mohawk and missing half her right arm), the Wizard, the Scarecrow (who has an amazingly cut chest for a scarecrow) and the Wicked Witch.

Besides cutting their hair, I remember playing circus with them once, and drawing circles on them with magic marker (so they could be clowns). You can still see the very faint circles on their bodies. I remember acting out A Little Princess with the Wizard of Oz dolls, with Dorothy being Sara, and the Witch being Miss Minchin.

I wonder if I could sell the Shaun Cassidy doll on eBay. That one's in pretty good shape. I think I'll keep the others though. They're all little tiny pieces of me that I didn't realize were missing. It's good to have them back.